Letters and Phone Calls
by illuminata79
Summary: Jess continues to look for her long-lost brother, writing and phoning anyone she thinks could help her.
1. Chapter 1

Jess is still pursuing her search for Mick and very much hopes she will finally succeed.

**Indigo Home** by **Roo Panes **is the song I chose to go with this story, as it also speaks of longing for an absent beloved person (even if the beloved person in question certainly has eyes of a different colour!)

_Dry eyes, roaring falls,_  
_ God knows I've travelled far, so far,_  
_ But this is where it ends_  
_ Found me, right about the time that I found you,_  
_ For once, I was doing something right_  
_ Night fell, you were asked._

_ Are you lost in paradise my love, or have you found a home?_  
_ It's an awfully lonely road to walk alone,_  
_ But as I searched your flashing indigo eyes, it echoed true_  
_ That I loved you,_  
_ That I loved you._

_ Dawn woke, I knew that it was time for my return,_  
_ But this time it will likely hurt as hell,_  
_ Sometimes way across the ocean on a far away shore,_  
_ We both stand and we both call, both call._

_ If you give love and live long, then you'll never be alone,_  
_ If you give love and live long, you you'll always have a home,_  
_ If you give love and live long, then you'll never be alone,_  
_ If you give love and live long, you you'll always have a home._

_ Are you lost in paradise my love, or have you found a home?_  
_ It's an awfully lonely road to walk alone,_  
_ But as I searched your flashing indigo eyes, it echoed true_  
_ That I loved you,_  
_ That I loved you._

_ We were lost in the fields trading tales of home,_  
_ But everyone knew that your gaze was my home,_  
_ We were lost in the fields trading tales of home,_  
_ But everyone knew that your gaze was my home._

* * *

After she had posted her letter to Australia, Jess could hardly eat or sleep and sometimes wondered how she managed to concentrate on her work and not make some grievous mistakes.

She spent as good as every waking minute thinking about her brother, about where he might be, what he might be doing, how he earned his living and whether he had a wife and a family or was still the solitary kind of person he had always been.

Often, she wondered about his wartime experience, feared the injury that had kept him out of battle until it ended had done him permanent harm.

Was he alive at all, or had his wound ultimately killed him, rendering her search and her rekindled hopes moot?

She so wanted to believe Oliver when he said, "He needn't have done anything worse than step into a hole and break his leg to be laid up until well after the war ended. That was what happened to Patrick, and you know he wrecked his ankle and was out of action for almost four months."

It was a sensible view to take, but she couldn't quite shake the dreary assumptions this little voice at the back of her head kept whispering and the images it conjured.

And it wasn't just the physical aspect that bothered her.

She had seen so many vets whose personalities had been utterly changed by what they had been through, who had turned into bitter, depressed, cynical old men long before their time, and fervently hoped Mick had not lost his sense of humour, his vivid imagination and his rare genuine smile that used to light up his face so charmingly.

What if whatever he had been through had actually left him cold and hard and jaded, unmoved by his little sister showing up out of nowhere?

What if he had decided to leave his old life behind completely and simply wanted to be left alone?

She couldn't possibly blame him if he had indeed burned all his bridges after what had happened and was not interested in a family reunion after such a long time of silence.

She worried and fretted and, when no answer came in weeks and weeks, slowly began to wonder if it had in fact been a good idea to try and find him.

Until, one evening, Ethel waved an envelope at her when she came home from work.

"I wasn't aware you knew somebody in Australia", she remarked pointedly.

"Oh, well, I just … tried to follow up on some … some old ties", Jess stammered and took the letter from her without any further explanation. Nosy woman!

It wasn't from her brother himself, that much was sure just from looking at the pale pink stationery with a pattern of flowers in one corner and the dainty handwriting.

She wanted to tear it open the minute she stepped into her room, but for some reason not quite clear to her own mind, she forced herself to take her usual shower first and only slit the flap when she had changed into a comfortable wool dress and settled into the worn armchair.

The back of the letter said it was from one Mrs. M. R. Rooney.

Never heard of her, Jess thought, reckoning this was going to prove another dead end. But still she was a little curious who it might be writing to her, hoping against hope that this unknown woman would add at least some tiny missing piece to the puzzle she was trying to solve.

_Dear Miss Cleaver,_ the letter read.

_I hope this finds you well._

_You may be wondering who I am and how I come to answer your letter._

_Eleanor Cunningham, whom your letter was addressed to, was my aunt and left her house to me and my husband when she passed away two years ago because she had no surviving children of her own._

_While I do not know where Mr. Carpenter is living now, I remember him quite well. _

_Or rather, I remember well that my aunt was very fond of him. I only met him briefly once or twice myself. _

_He was lodging with Aunt Ellie for a while after he left the hospital because he didn't seem to have anywhere to go and he was unable to return to whatever he had done before because of his injuries._

_I cannot for the life of me recall what it was he used to do for a living or where he had been living, only that his job had been something unusual and he had been based in some exotic place in the Pacific. New Guinea, maybe, or somewhere close._

_One thing I do remember is that he left for Sydney with his fiancée after a couple of months. She was a bit of a celebrity at the time – maybe you have heard of this young researcher who spent years living in some remote Pacific island with the natives and went on to write an outrageous book about it which made quite some waves in the press. I'm afraid I do not remember her name either, but perhaps someone at a bookshop or library can help you find out. As I said, the book made lots of headlines, even overseas, and a good librarian ought to be able to identify the young lady in question._

_My sincere apologies for not being able to provide anything more useful, but I hope I could at least point you in the right direction._

_Good luck in finding your brother. I will keep both of you in my thoughts and prayers._

_Yours sincerely,  
Millie Rooney_

Jess read the letter twice and then once more before she dropped it into her lap and stared out of the window, wondering what exactly she was feeling.

It was not quite a hot trail yet, but if what Millie Rooney said was true and this researcher woman's book had indeed been sold in the States, it might become one.

_I need to ring Linda,_ she thought.

If anyone knew about that book, it would be Linda Kane, her college friend to whom the term book_worm_ didn't quite do justice. Linda was more of a book-devouring dragon and had consequently gone on from college to work at a bookshop in her hometown in Maryland.

Jess's knee joints seemed to have dissolved into bits of jelly when she rose from the armchair, and she had to hold on to the windowsill for a moment as scraps of the letter swirled in her mind.

_My aunt was very fond of him._

_Unable to return … because of his injuries._

So he must indeed have been wounded quite seriously. Mick would not easily have given up a profession he liked.

_Some exotic place in the Pacific._

Just the thing he'd always been dreaming about when he was a boy. She remembered how he used to pore over his school atlas, tracing the coastline of some strange faraway land with the tip of his forefinger, smiling dreamily.

_This young researcher. His fiancée._

A researcher. The thought of her brother, who had so staunchly refused to even go to college, hitching up with an academic made her smile a little wryly.

If they were still together at all.

She might well find this famous researcher-writer only to receive another polite and friendly letter stating she, too, had no inkling of where to look for Michael Carpenter.

If she did receive anything.

_Get a grip, _she told herself. It wasn't like her to be so pessimistic.

She would take it one step at a time, and if all the effort turned to be out in vain in the end, she'd have all the time in the world for regret and sorrow.

The first logical step was phoning Linda, and she finally strode over to her desk, got her address book out of the drawer and walked to the phone.

It rang and rang, but obviously Linda wasn't home.

_Darn!_

But she wouldn't be discouraged so quickly, nor would she wait any longer to pursue her new little lead.

She dialed Oliver and Patrick's number instead.

Patrick answered and immediately made to get Oliver.

"No, hang on … it's actually you I wanted to speak to."

"Are you _sure_ it's me you want?"

"Yes", she said with a hint of exasperation. "I've heard from Mick's landlady. Or rather, the landlady's niece."

"Oh … wow. That's great!"

She gave him a brief summary of Millie Rooney's letter and asked, "You wouldn't happen to know what his fiancée was called, would you?"

Patrick sighed. "No, I don't. I'm not even sure if I ever knew her name."

Now it was Jess who couldn't hold back a sigh.

"But wait a minute … Danny might know. I'll ask him right away if you want me to."

"Who's Danny?"

"Danny O'Riordan. Another comrade of ours. Thought it funny to join the army with only one working eye and actually made it through training and on to the jungle. Of course, he got hit pretty quickly, and it was Mick who saved his sorry ass by having him transferred to HQ as a company clerk. Considering he owes Mick his life, he might well remember his girlfriend's name."

A shiver ran down Jess's spine when this new little jigsaw piece fell into place, adding another facet to the picture that was gradually taking shape in her mind.

"… will let you know", she heard Patrick finish his sentence, only then realizing she hadn't been listening.

"Thanks", she whispered with a lump in her throat.

The phone rang no half-hour later.

Ethel yelled for her, and she came flying down the stairs, breathing a hurried "Hello?" into the receiver.

"It's me again. I'm afraid Danny can't remember either. He says he thinks her first name was something like Ellen or Emily or Evelyn, but he isn't sure. Sorry, Jessie. I had hoped I'd have some better news for you."

"Don't worry, Patrick. It was worth trying."

She couldn't entirely keep the disappointment out of her voice, though. Patrick seemed to notice and said, "I'll keep an eye out for anything that might be helpful, I promise."

As they hung up, her eyes were brimming. She angrily wiped at them, took a deep breath and dialed Linda's number once more.

It was Callie, Linda's housemate, who answered the phone in her lazy Southern drawl. "Linda's off to see her parents", she said. "Don't know for sure when she'll be back. Monday or Tuesday, probably. D'you wanna leave a message?"

"Um … no, I don't think so. I'll just give it another try next week." In all probability, scatterbrained Callie would have forgotten to give Linda the message anyway.

Frustrated, she stomped up the stairs and dropped into the armchair. It was after seven already, so there wasn't much she could achieve that day, now that she had run out of people to phone.

She resolved to sacrifice tomorrow's lunch break to dash off to Morrison's bookshop downtown and ask about that female Australian researcher's scandalous book about living with natives in some obscure Pacific island, at the risk of getting laughed down. She could almost hear Mr. Morrison chuckle and see him shake his head while telling her in a kindly, scholarly voice that he had never heard of such a thing.

A sudden pain startled her out of her brooding. She hadn't realized she had been picking at a hangnail until the little shred of skin came loose and the cuticle began to bleed.

Angry that she had again fallen back into this childish habit she had never really been able to shake, she popped the maltreated finger into her mouth and sucked it, the strange tang of blood making her slightly queasy.

She hadn't been particularly hungry anyway and now decided to skip supper altogether. _Might as well go to bed right away,_ she thought, but couldn't bring herself to rise from the chair. She just sat there, heavy and drained, doing nothing, thinking nothing.

A knock on the door finally forced her to get up, and she rolled her eyes. Sometimes, Ethel loved to play mother to her if she thought she wasn't feeling well. Hopefully, she hadn't whipped up a bowl of soup or a plate of sandwiches for her to eat. She wasn't sure if she could keep anything down.

She hardly believed her eyes when she opened the door.

_"Oliver!" _she exclaimed. "How on earth did you …"

"This is an exception, honey, you hear me?" Ethel piped up from behind Oliver's tall figure. "He said it was very important and a family matter of extreme urgency and …"

"Won't happen again, Mrs. Sutherland, I promise", Oliver said with a contrite puppy-dog look and slyly added, "And thanks ever so much for turning a blind eye this time. I really appreciate that."

Ethel smiled and hung back for a moment, apparently hoping to catch what this urgent family matter was, but when Jess pulled Oliver inside her room and closed the door, she retreated downstairs.

"Now what _is_ so urgent? Is anything wrong?" Jess searched his flushed face anxiously, but, if anything, there was the hint of a grin lurking in the corners of his mouth.

"Nothing's wrong. You won't believe what happened. Charlene's back."

"Charlene's back? That's why you came up here, to tell me _Charlene's back?_ Am I supposed to do the happy dance now or what?" Jess frowned at her boyfriend and wondered if he had lost his wits.

"Don't get all worked up just yet, okay? Let me finish first." Oliver held up both hands in a calming gesture and went on, "Well, as I said, Charlene came back last night, and she showed up again this evening just when Patrick was talking to Danny on the phone. She heard most of it, and so he told her about your search for Mick."

Jess snorted disdainfully at the thought of Patrick discussing her brother with that little blond piece.

Oliver ignored it and went on, "He mentioned your brother's fiancée and the book, and you know what? Charlene's actually read it! She even said she still has the book!"

"Charlene reads _books?"_ Jess couldn't keep her sarcasm to herself but had to admit that she would now have to be doubly grateful to her, for she would never have seen the photo of Mick if Charlene hadn't walked out on Patrick a few weeks ago, and now she, of all people, could well be the one to provide the crucial clue.

"No, sorry, that was mean, I guess. I really don't know what to say." She ran both hands through her hair and rubbed her face and plucked at her dress, utterly agitated. "What's she called, now?"

"Charlene didn't say. I'm not sure she remembers off the top of her head. But she's gone home to fetch the book, and I've come here to fetch _you_. She says she thinks there are one or two pictures of him in the book's photo section …"

Before he had finished speaking, Jess had already brushed her hair and wrapped a scarf around her neck and was half out the door to get her shoes.

Oliver could hardly keep up with her quick, eager stride as they walked the short distance to his and Patrick's place in the cool October air. He shivered a little in his sports coat, but she didn't seem to feel the chill, although she was wearing nothing over her wool dress but a checked cotton scarf.

"Hey, don't run like that! Charlene won't be back yet anyway!" Oliver panted a little as he tried to catch up with her, but he knew nothing was going to stop her.

Patrick was leaning in the open front door, smoking a cigarette, and greeted Jess with a companionable one-armed hug. He said something Oliver didn't catch, but it made her smile a little despite her apparent nervousness.

They went through into the cramped living-room, with Patrick serving them beers unasked, and sat on the scratchy sage-green sofa side by side. When Oliver reached for Jess's hand, it was just as clammy and cold as he had expected it to be.

She drank her beer right from the bottle with anxious little sips that reminded him of a small bird pecking at a feeder, and when she wasn't drinking, she picked at the label on the bottle until it came off and shredded it into tiny bits that she flicked into the ashtray on the side table.

Patrick and Oliver tried to keep some conversation going, but it faltered again and again until they finally heard the front door being pushed open and Charlene's heels pattering across the tiled hallway.

"Knock, knock", she said perkily as she entered, flamboyant as ever in an emerald-green wool coat with a black scarf thrown dramatically around her neck, a black beret cocked rakishly on top of her platinum-blond curls and her lips painted cherry-red.

Jess had to admit, albeit grudgingly, that the flashy outfit suited her. Charlene had this certain thing that made it look classy instead of tacky.

"Jess, darling, I'm so glad there's something I can do to help", she said as she peeled off her coat and tossed it over the back of Patrick's chair, all the while holding on to a hardback book with a black-and-white photo on the front cover.

She took off the beret and shook out her hair as she sat down in the only remaining chair, leaned over and squeezed Jess's knee. "I wish someone would help me find a trace of Robbie. My brother", she hastened to add when she caught Jess's uncomprehending look. "He's been MIA since '44, and no one was ever able to tell us anything concrete. All we know is that he's been gone since the Battle of Leyte." She closed her huge eyes for a moment, and there was nothing coquettish in it.

"I'm … so sorry, Charlene. I … I had no idea …" Jess swallowed hard and looked at the other young woman helplessly.

"How could you? It's okay. Kinda. Well, I mean, I miss him, which I'd never have thought I would because he used to be such an awful nuisance, but …" Charlene drew an audible breath through her nose and laid the book onto the table in front of Jess with a resolute flourish. "Anyway. This is her book. Evelyn Spence. The famous young anthropologist with the scandalous field of research."

Jess hesitantly reached out her hand to touch the dust jacket, registering idly that it was a little torn in one corner. The large photo on the cover depicted a dark-skinned woman wearing nothing but a kind of loincloth and some strange ornaments made of feathers and beads on leather thongs.

Above the photograph, slender, unadorned letters formed the book's title, _In a Savage Land._

Below, a name, spelled out in the same font.

_Evelyn Spence._

She picked up the book at long last, just staring at the cover, the photo, the name.

"You can have it for as long as you like", Charlene said as if from afar. "Take it home with you to read it and to have a look at the pictures. You don't need to do that with all of us watching."

Again, Jess felt slightly embarrassed. Never in her life would she have expected Charlene to be so thoughtful and kind-hearted.

She only shook her head impatiently and opened the book, turned the pages, scanned the text and decided to start reading later.

A thin dark band along the edge of the pages marked the photo section, which was what she decided to check first.

A tall blond man in white tropical gear posing in front of a simple wooden hut. _Philip in front of our erstwhile home, _the caption read.

She skimmed on through the photo section. A village consisting of similar huts, high palm trees in the background, lots of curly-haired natives in their traditional skimpy clothing, with a particular focus on women. Boats, a small lake shaded by palm trees. More huts, more palm trees, a heavyset white man with a priest's collar and jovial grin, a hymnal in one hand and a fishing rod in the other, another white man, small and wiry, with a little moustache and twinkly eyes. The blond man from the first photograph again, reading on the front porch of a larger house.

None of them remotely resembled her brother, neither the slender youth she remembered nor the muscular soldier in Patrick's photo.

She turned the next-to-last page to a landscape-format photograph that stretched across both pages.

It depicted a beach, with the sea lapping at the vast strip of sand and lots of little wooden longboats beyond the waterline. A host of small dark figures populated the scenery, getting off the boats, walking towards the photographer.

And among the foremost little group of people, a tall figure towering over the diminutive islanders, broad shoulders in a pale shirt, a big arm wrapped good-naturedly around the back of an elderly native while the other waved at the camera, messy dark curls sticking up in all directions above a clean-cut face. The snapshot was somewhat blurry but the distinctive features were clearly recognizable – the bold, straight nose, the angular chin and the curve of his mouth as he smiled.

Her breath caught in her throat with a small sobbing noise.

She barely felt Oliver's arm coming round her back, didn't hear what Charlene was saying.

Hardly daring to believe what she had just seen, she flipped to the last photo page and couldn't suppress another sharp intake of breath.

There he was again, in a picture that filled half of the page, cross-legged in the sand, a large shell in one hand and a knife in the other to carefully prise it open, his head bowed and his eyes cast downward, this quietly focused expression on his face that she had seen a hundred times or more when he was reading or repairing his bicycle or whittling away at a bit of wood as he had often done.

The caption simply said, _After the 'pearling'._

Jess heard her blood rushing in her ears and could not have told what she felt. She clapped both hands to her mouth, trembling, her eyes wide and glittering with tears as she stared at the man in the picture, taking in the familiar sculpted cheekbones and heavy-lidded eyes.

Was it too much to hope for that all should be well in the end?


	2. Chapter 2

Jess heaved a deep sigh as she read the last paragraph and squeezed her strained eyes shut for a moment. It was half past two in the night, and she was dog tired, but she had not been able to put the book down before she was finished.

Evelyn Spence's personal tale, told in a witty, compelling style, had swept her along on a wave of impressions, facts and events, and she had found herself turning the pages faster and faster, all the while not wanting it to end.

Mick Carpenter, the quiet pearl trader, did not appear too much in the first half of the book except to take Evelyn along for a pearl-diving trip, but he got lots of little mentions later on, as he apparently became a more and more important figure in the young researcher's life.

Spellbound, Jess had read Evelyn's account of of her husband's death and the traditional mourning ritual that had helped her cope, of the first shadows of the war cast over the island and of her and Mick hiding away in a cave until she finally left after all when things became too dangerous to stay.

Mick had stayed on for a while, though, before he somehow ended up in the army and later, via the hospital in Brisbane and Mrs. Cunningham's spare room, in Sydney with Evelyn.

Jess wondered why he had not seized the chance to flee the embattled island with his lover. Or had they not yet been lovers at the time?

She flipped back to the photo section and gently drew a fingertip along the contour of his cheek in the pearl-shell photo.

More than ever, she longed to see him, to make sure he was alright, to ask him all those questions she had, to tell him just how much she loved him.

Linda, ever helpful, had suggested that she try to contact Evelyn Spence through her publisher and had even come up with a name and address at their US branch.

Jess had written to this Miss Ava Hillock a few days ago but not yet heard back from her.

For some reason, she doubted she ever would. Miss Hillock had probably taken her for an impostor and tossed her letter in the wastebasket without batting an eyelash.

Suddenly, she felt she could not wait much longer, and another idea took shape in her mind, dispelling her fatigue.

She got up and squatted in front of her bookcase, pulled out a tall volume, bound in a grey protective cover of tattered paper, from the bottom shelf and proceeded to open it in the dim light of her bedside lamp. She quickly found the page she was looking for, a colourful map of the world's time zones, glanced at her alarm clock and smiled as she donned a pair of stockings, threw on her coat and grabbed the little jar of loose change from her desk.

Before she left the room, she affectionately ran her hand over the stack of sheet music in the bookshelf, another souvenir of her brother. He had not taken it with him when he left because their grandparents didn't own a piano, and although her own lessons had not been very fruitful and she hadn't played since her early teens, she had kept the books and loose sheets because they had once been his.

Shoes in hand, she tiptoed down the stairs, noiselessly opened the front door and sneaked outside, slipping on her penny loafers on the doorstep.

It was pitch dark except for the cold light of the moon and a flickering street lamp down by the intersection. This was where she headed, or rather, the phone booth around the corner.

She dropped some coins into the slot, spoke to the operator and felt her heartbeat accelerate as the dial tone adopted a different sound and a woman with an unfamiliar accent answered the phone in a professional tone of voice.

Jess had to clear her throat before she could speak and ask the question that sounded so trivial and meant so much.

"Have you got an entry for Michael Carpenter in or around Sydney?"

"Several in fact, ma'am. One's in Blakehurst, one's in Hunter's Hill, and there are another two downtown. Which one would you like the number for?"

"Uh … I'm not quite sure." Jess's mind went completely blank for a moment. "Can you give me all the numbers, please, and put me through to the first one?"

She tried to copy down the numbers in the half-darkness, using a pencil stub and a used cinema ticket from her coat pocket, and found herself actually holding her breath when the foreign dial tone was in her ear once more.

She dug her fingers firmly into the thick fabric of her coat lapel, expecting to collapse any moment while it was ringing.

"Hello?"

A female voice, fresh and clear through the static crackle on the line. Was that _her?_

"Hello … um ... my name is Jessica Cleaver, and I'm looking for M-Mick Carpenter."

For a second, none of them spoke.

"I'm … I'm his sister. Jessica. Jess. Can I ... can I speak to him?"

There was a little gasp at the other end of the line, and the pleasant voice said with an incredulous laugh, "But of course you can. Hold on for a minute."

Jess heard the receiver being laid aside with a little clatter and footsteps retreating.

The faint, rapid murmur of voices at a distance.

Footsteps, heavier than the first and a little slower, approaching. She tried to picture him coming to the phone and failed.

"Hello?"

His voice, with a much darker timbre than she had known it, but his voice nevertheless.

The ground under Jess's feet seemed to sway.

"Mick?" It was almost a squeal, and she swallowed and blinked and finally pulled herself together and went on in a calmer tone, "Hello, Mick. It's me … it's Jess."

He remained silent, apparently dumbstruck by his little sister reappearing in his life out of nothing.

Or did he resent her calling, was he searching for some polite words to tell her to leave him alone?

"Your sister, Jess. You … you remember me, don't you?" Her voice quivered miserably.

"Of course I remember you, Jessie. How could I not remember you?" His voice also faltered, and he laughed his funny little laugh which turned into a snuffling sob.

Jess could not remember ever hearing him cry, and she, too, broke into tears, holding on to the greasy receiver in the musty telephone booth as if her life depended on it, and if she was shivering in her nightshirt and wool coat, it was not because of the cold.

_She had found him._

Half a lifetime, or more, of separation had come to an end on what was a lovely early-summer evening in Sydney and a dank and chilly night with more than a hint of winter in Chicago.

There was an ocean and eight time zones and half a huge continent between them, but that didn't matter.

All she had to do was book a ticket to Australia, and hell, yes, she would, no matter the cost.


	3. Chapter 3

Once more, Jess dialed a phone number with her heart racing.

After telling Oliver first thing in the morning, who had let out a whoop loud enough that she was sure she could have heard it from three blocks away without the aid of modern technology, she had decided to call her sister.

Janie had been indifferent about Mick at best ever since she was ten years old and had in fact stated her opinion time and again that Mick wasn't worth searching for if he hadn't tried to stay in touch, but Jess couldn't _not _tell her. Maybe her sister was human after all and would be happy to hear the good tidings.

Still, she was a bit afraid of how Janie would take the news.

They had not been close since she'd started high school, and her career choice certainly hadn't improved things. Janie had made expressly clear that she thought her sister was spoiling any chance of finding a decent husband if she went about plunging her hands into people's innards or touching infectious patients. "You'll end up catching some unspeakable disease and die a horrible death. Don't say I didn't warn you."

Jess had laughed it off at the time, but she had never really forgiven her for it, or for many similar snide remarks.

The phone at Janie's rang six, seven, eight times, and Jess was already about to give up when a breathless child's voice answered.

"Helloooo? This is Brian! Who are you?"

"Brian, how many times do I have to tell you that you're not to pick up the phone!" The child protested as his mother wrestled the receiver off him and said sweetly into the mouthpiece, "Hello, good morning – who's speaking, please?"

"Janie, it's me. Jess."

"Oh, Jess. How are you." Janie sounded more than just a little frosty all of a sudden. "Is it important? You know, we were just about to leave for church …" She seemed eager to hang up and go on with her neat little Sunday family schedule.

"Wait a sec, Janie. I have to tell you something. I've found Mick."

Not a sound at the other end of the line, only the kids pottering around in the background.

"Just imagine, Janie, I've finally found him!"

"Oh, um, really. That's … that's quite … quite a surprise."

Jess wanted to throttle her for being so lackadaisical about this miracle that had just happened and even more for what she said next.

"I was beginning to think we hadn't got a brother any more. Now tell me, where has our adventurer sailed off to? What's he doing? Scraping along just so on his sailor's wages in some dreary port town? Or did he make it big somewhere after all?"

"He's in Australia", Jess said pointedly. "He's been there since he was wounded in the war and shipped off to hospital in …"

"He was in the war? He served?" Janie perked up after all. Her own husband had returned from three overseas stints a highly decorated lieutenant, a fact of which she was extremely proud. "So he does have _some_ sense of responsibility."

Jess tried very hard not to scream. Instead, she said acidly, "Sometimes, you really make me wonder when exactly you turned into a carbon copy of Aunt Dorothy!" She inhaled sharply and went on, "Anyway, I'm planning to go to Australia as soon as I can. Do you want to come, too?"

"Dear me, hold your horses, Jess! I can't go voyaging around the world at will. I have a family to take care of! And haven't you got a job, and a fiancé who deserves your full attention? What does Oliver think of all this? Haven't you got a wedding to plan? I'll bet you haven't even decided about the location yet! If you want to have the reception at the country club, Jim says it's high time you put your name down, and …"

"Janie, as I've said a million times before, we're getting married _here, _not in Virginia, and surely not at Jim's stupid country club! Anyway, I didn't call to talk about the wedding. Discussing seating arrangements and choosing the colour of the bridesmaids' dresses is certainly not my top priority at the moment, so I won't keep you any longer. You dash off to church now, and I'll take that trip to Australia on my own. I just thought you might want to know about Mick." She paused, and when Janie remained silent, she added with a touch of bitterness, "Shall I say hello for you when I see him?"

Janie snorted. "If he wants to see you at all. I hope to God you won't end up wishing you had never found him. He might be living in some dirty hovel with a cheap little whore for all you know."

They said their cool goodbyes, and Jess bit her lip and clenched her fists, trying not to let her rage and disappointment get the better of her. She had so wanted to bury the hatchet, but it was impossible. They had so little in common now that it seemed almost ridiculous to her that they should be sisters.

For a split second, she wondered if Mick had become a total stranger, too, with their blood and not their mutual feelings creating a bond between them - someone she didn't like a lot, someone who didn't care much about her either.

She cursed Janie bitterly for planting the seeds of doubt in her mind, then told herself not to be stupid.

Her sister had not heard his voice over the bad telephone line, older and darker but otherwise very much the same. Loving. Beautiful. Sincere.

Let Janie shrug off the past as if it had never existed if she thought it made her happy.

Maybe she ought to learn to do the same in certain respects.

* * *

What Jess could not have known was how her sister had been fingering a small carved animal as they spoke.

A little knickknack that had been sitting on the telephone table for ages, so long that nobody took notice of it any longer, not even Janie herself.

While she had listened to Jess's astounding news, she had for the first time in years really looked at Freddie, as she had christened the plump, smiling dolphin back when she received him, coaxed from the same bit of driftwood as Jess's own seahorse by their brother's artful penknife, and her eyes had watered a little with the memory of the last Christmas with Mick, more than twenty years ago.

But by the time Brian called for her impatiently from the doorstep and Jim yelled through the open car window that they were going to be late for church, her eyes were dry and her face unperturbed, even when Brian asked innocently, "Mommy, what's a whore?"


	4. Chapter 4

Jess almost flinched under the blast of heat as she walked down the gangway, tired from traveling for a full day and night and a little nauseated from the bumpy landing.

She had boarded her flight in the sleet and wind typical of November in Chicago, and it felt surreal to alight in the warmth and sun of Sydney.

There was more than a taste of summer in the hot air, and she got light-headed for a moment with the heat and the excitement she was feeling.

She allowed herself the luxury of a taxi and felt quite decadent. She had raided her bank account, which fortunately had still held some of the money Grandpa Cleaver had left to her, to pay for this trip and decided it was okay to splurge some more on a comfortable car to take her into town, considering the state she was in. She certainly had no wish to mark her arrival in her brother's adopted homeland by keeling over on the bus.

When the driver dropped her off at a small B&B not too far from where Mick lived, she checked into her room and started to unpack her bag, but fatigue overcame her quickly, and she flopped onto the bed and was asleep within seconds.

Bright daylight flooded the room when she awoke.

She consulted her alarm clock, which she had wisely set to Sydney time before she left, afraid she had overslept the time she and Mick had agreed on.

With a funny feeling, she realized that it was five o'clock and still Friday and she wasn't due to see her brother until noon the next day.

Such a long time to go.

Unbearably long all of a sudden.

A bold idea popped into her mind.

It wasn't too late yet to visit today, was it?

She jumped up, went to the washstand in the corner to splash her face with cold water and wash a bit, changed into a clean set of clothes and brushed her hair, surprised that it wasn't looking a whole lot worse after the long journey and several hours of sleep.

Asking the friendly landlord for directions, she set out on foot, the sun still blazing in the sky, the sweet scent of blooming trees along the pretty residential streets heady and exotic and beautiful.

As she turned a corner, she could see an azure hint of the sea in the distance.

She compared the name of the street on the crumpled slip of paper she'd kept safe in her purse with the name on the plaque she had just passed.

Yes, this was it.

Just a little farther down the road.

A low-slung, well-kept bungalow-style house, nice but not showy, flowerpots on the windowsill, the front door painted white, a small car in the driveway, a tall tree towering over it all.

She swallowed nervously, but her mouth was dry.

Was it a bad idea to show up early and unannounced? Impolite, intrusive even?

Should she have waited after all?

She half resolved to leave without drawing any attention, but what if he, or his wife, had accidentally glimpsed her from a window and she made a real fool of herself if she walked away now?

Her pulse pounding so wildly that she believed it must be visible from yards away, she squared her shoulders, stepped up to the door and pressed the bell push.

_Don't faint don't faint don't faint! _she repeated silently when black spots began to dance before her eyes, and she managed to get back to normal before the door was opened by a pretty, petite redhead, a little shorter than herself, dressed all in white.

Recognition struck her like lightning.

_Evelyn!_

She looked exactly the same as in the photos in her book and greeted her with a friendly but somewhat reserved smile.

"I … I … uh … I'm Jess. I … I'm sorry I'm … sort of … early … but …"

She felt like a gabbling idiot, but the other woman simply embraced her and said, "I'm glad that I finally get to meet you, Jess. Welcome to Australia. Come with me, we're all out in the garden."

_All?_

"Oh … I … I hope I'm not intruding … if you're having … guests …"

"Don't you worry. It's just us. Mick and Annie and myself." She caught Jess's questioning look and explained, "Annie's our little daughter."

A tiny squawk escaped Jess's throat upon hearing that he had a child, a little girl. He must be a wonderful father, if the way he'd had with her and Janie was anything to go by.

She followed Evelyn through a narrow corridor and a spacious, light-filled living-room from which a pair of open French doors led on to a flagstone terrace and a garden that overlooked the sea.

"What a little paradise you've got here", she murmured, then stopped abruptly when her gaze fell on the bench at the far end of the small garden and the man that occupied it. His black hair was much shorter than she remembered it but long enough for his curls to show, his shoulders a lot broader than they used to be underneath a navy blue shirt.

Evelyn gently touched her arm and walked on ahead of her to tell Mick about the premature arrival of their visitor.

He didn't rise but turned his head, and their eyes met for an electrifying second.

Jess stumbled on, wondering briefly why he wasn't getting up, remembering the mention of a grave injury with an unpleasant twinge, but as she approached, she saw he was holding a little girl of three or four, fast asleep in her father's arms, chestnut curls falling over soft round cheeks, her head nestled into the crook of his arm as his big hands cradled her protectively. An open book lay beside him, a children's book to judge from the colourful illustrations.

Mick was watching her, but he didn't say a word. He only smiled.

Jess herself couldn't speak for a moment, she just stood before him and _looked, _while he, too, studied her face.

Her brother had gone from a handsome youth to a downright striking man. What had been a very pretty boy - not just judging by her own adoring-little-sister standards - had grown into a man of remarkable charisma, attractive in a stunningly intense way.

There was a scar through his eyebrow that she did not recognize, a thin white line on suntanned skin, and little creases around his eyes, but they only added to his charm, as did the way the harsher lines around his mouth softened as he smiled and the silver sprinkles among the black hair.

Finally, he broke the silence. "Jessie … don't you want to sit down with your old brother?"

She laughed and sat next to him, very acutely aware of his warm body as he drew her close to his side with little Annie still slumbering in his lap, just the way he used to when they were little girls and Janie was in his other arm.

She wrapped her arms around him as best she could without disturbing the child and buried her face against his neck, kissing him softly, feeling a little frisson as he stroked her hair.

Through a mist of happy tears, she looked up as she noted Evelyn approaching, who gently lifted Annie off her father's lap and said, "I'll tuck her in tonight. She's sound asleep and won't miss you for once. You two go on and catch up with each other."

She walked away with the girl, and both Jess and Mick began to speak at the same time.

Chuckling, he said, "Ladies first. Tell me what you've been up to."

"Well, you know I've been to medical school and am about to finish my internship. Isn't it funny that it was me, in the end, who fulfilled Mom's dreams of her child going to university and follow in Dad's footsteps? She'd have been quite horrified about my choice, I guess. Aunt Dorothy certainly was."

They both laughed.

"She thinks me a total failure. Almost thirty and still not married. She'd probably die of a heart attack if she knew I have no intention of procreating once I do get wed. Sometimes I've a good mind to tell her, just to rub her nose in it, but then I guess it's a childish notion."

"That means the old crone is still around?"

"'Fraid so. I try to avoid her wherever I can, though, after what she did to us." Now that she was here with Mick, Dorothy's machinations seemed even more outrageous.

She gave her brother a short account of what had happened all those years ago, which made his eyes blaze with sudden anger.

"I suspected something like that, and Grandma did, too. She used to say 'I'm sure it's all that dreadful woman's doing'. I don't know how many times I've wished I had persuaded her and Grandpa to take the two of you to Maine with us. How different all our lives would have been."

He stared out at the sea with narrowed eyes and a pained expression.

"Don't blame yourself", she said and laid a hand on his back. _"I _certainly don't. You were just a kid yourself. Taking care of me and Janie would have been quite a lot to ask of a teenage boy."

He smiled a little sadly and asked, "How's Janie doing?"

Jess smirked unabashedly. "Janie's the _good_ girl, the one who's done everything right. She worked as a typist for a while, got married, had two cute kids in quick succession and is a successful mother and housewife now."

He gave her a quizzical look, obviously surprised by the bitterness in her voice.

"We're … we're not very close any more." Jess sensed that he was disappointed to hear that and quickly changed the subject. "And now for you! I hear you found your little treasure island, complete with pearls and all. Just like the stories you used to write for us."

"Yes, I guess I did." He grinned his sweet crooked grin. "Only the princesses were missing, at least until Evelyn came along."

"How did you get there in the first place? I thought you'd become a sailor, or gone back to your fishing."

He told her about their grandparents' deaths within less than a year of each other, about his rocky relationship with Rosie and his doomed engagement to Nell, about the errant year he had spent travelling the oceans without a destination or purpose, about the island, the pearl trade, the natives, about the missionary and the Commissioner and Gerry, and about an arrogant professor and his perky young wife. He relayed shortly how he had joined the army, had stopped a Jap bullet just weeks before the war was over and thus ended up in Australia, where he had, miraculously, been reunited with Evelyn against all hope.

"A happy ending to the treasure-island fairy tale." His lip curled a little ironically. "I guess I need a drink now after all this talking. How about you? Do you want a beer?"

"Sure!"

Jess grinned when he raised his eyebrows in mock horror and tried to imagine what Aunt Dorothy would think of her sitting in Mick's garden, guzzling beer. Something about the world going to hell in a handcart, probably.

While Mick was getting their drinks, she got up and walked to the cliff top that made up the rear border of the garden. There was a path leading straight down to the beach, and she could hear the sea rushing steadily. What a beautiful, peaceful place. Her brother was a lucky man, she thought.

"Here's your beer, miss." He had reappeared behind her, handed her one cool brown bottle, raised his and said, "Let's drink to the happy old times. And to you, for not giving up on me."

"To _you_", she replied. "for having me. To _us."_

Jess drank thirstily, all the while watching her brother. He still moved with that easy grace and still appeared utterly unaware of his own beauty.

She remembered all the horrible visions she'd had after hearing he had taken a hit in the war and burst out, "I can't begin to tell you how glad I am that you're alive and well. When Patrick said you'd been wounded and didn't go back to combat, I was imagining all kinds of awful things that could have happened to you, that you'd been crippled or disfigured or that you'd died after all. I'm so happy that you've proved me wrong."

He looked at her with a puzzling expression, as if he was trying to find the right words to tell her that she had just made the biggest, stupidest blunder of her lifetime.

Which was exactly what he began to do in his gentle, big-brotherly manner as he took her hand and said softly, "You didn't see me walking when I went to get the beers, did you?"

She shook her head, perplexed. What was he getting at?

He might have been a little stiff in the knees when he rose from the bench, but …

"You know, it's not just figuratively speaking if I say that I didn't quite come back in one piece."

She stared at him, wide-eyed, disbelieving, studying his legs for visible traces of an injury, which was, of course, a daft thing to do as he was wearing a pair of long khaki pants that hid from view whatever there was to hide. She held her breath as she waited for him to continue, the spark of a terrible suspicion she didn't really want to pursue kindling at the back of her mind.

He tapped both his legs with the beer bottle and said calmly, "Only one of them survived."

Her hand came free and flew up to cover her mouth, and she closed her eyes, brimming with tears yet again.

"Oh no, Mick, no! Please say you didn't … they didn't …" Her voice trailed off.

"Yes, Princess, they did", he said softly. "They had to. I got shot in the thigh, and the wound went bad, so they had no other choice if they wanted to save my life."

"My God, Mick. Oh my God. I'm so sorry. I'm so stupid. How … how on earth did you manage to get through all that … how did you cope …?"

The bottle slipped from her hand, spilling beer on the grass, and he quickly deposited his and pulled her close, held her as she cried at his chest and told her, "At first, I didn't cope at all. I wished they'd just left me in that damned jungle to die. I thought my life was over, but then I found it wasn't. In fact, all kinds of amazing things happened after that. I found Evelyn. I found a new job I liked. We had Annie. And now you've found me. I know this must be quite a shock for you, but believe me, there's no need to feel sorry for me."

She nodded, but sobbed even harder.

"It's okay, Princess. Let it all out now, but promise me you won't pity me when you're done crying. I'm fine, really." He tilted up her chin to make her face him. "Who needs two legs when you can have your long-lost sister back instead?"

She smiled weakly through her tears. "You're not making sense, Mick. But I love you anyway."

* * *

Evelyn had just been about to call out to them that dinner was ready, but she stayed put by the French doors when she saw them standing by the cliff top in each other's arms.

It seemed like one of those moments upon which nobody should intrude.

Dinner could wait, she decided.


End file.
